Drug Discovery

Drug discovery is only successful if the molecular target is validated with respect to its critical involvement in disease pathogenesis and/or propagation. Ultimately, this validation must occur in the clinic but screening in disease relevant and primary cells can provide strong evidence to support early discovery rationale.

Finding the right small molecule starting point is crucial to the future success of a drug discovery project. Sygnature Discovery offers a range of established strategies to deliver high-quality, validated hit compounds.

Sygnature undertakes hit to lead projects, utilising efficient design, make, test, analyse cycles. Hit to lead projects typically run for six to nine months and two to three lead series are usually selected for progression into lead optimisation at Sygnature.

During the lead optimisation phase of a drug discovery project, medicinal chemists at Sygnature endeavour to deliver compounds which meet the target candidate profile (TCP) agreed with the client at the outset.

Drug discovery using libraries of molecular fragments of typically <=300 molecular weight (MW) offers an innovative approach to hit identification for a range of biological targets and is an alternative to the more established methods of hit identification, such as high-throughput screening (HTS).

Sygnature Discovery performs integrated drug discovery projects through a unique and synergistic combination of in-house resource and expertise, and a federation of centres of drug discovery expertise located around the world.